Been a while, let's do Dash!
(obvious disclaimer: I work for Dash, so take that into account... but you should be critically evaluating anything anyone says on the internet to begin with anyway)
And please read the below article before proceeding or you won't know what I'm talking about!
@thedessertlinux/stop-hoarding-gas-tokens-crypto-investing-for-the-modern-age-8ga
One thing worth noting beforehand is that Dash has shifted significantly in the past year, and now has a second blockchain, the Evolution chain, for data transfer and storage purposes. This changes the use cases, and therefore the investment thesis.
🪙GAS TOKEN: Dash/Credits
On the main Core payments chain, Dash is itself its own gas token. You should buy Dash as a gas token if you wish to send Dash for instant private payments.
Dash bridged to the Evolution chain is known as Credits. You'd want to have Credits if you want to write decentralized data to the Evolution network, mint/send tokens, etc.
🪙INVESTMENT TOKEN: Dash/mining
Because Dash is a hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-service system, fees are split among miners and masternodes. The Evolution chain, however, is pure proof-of-stake.
You should mine Dash if you anticipate significant traction of the original Dash chain for payments. You should buy Dash to run masternodes/EvoNodes if you anticipate this, and/or significant usage of the Evolution network to power apps, data storage, tokens, etc.
🪙PRODUCT TOKEN: Dash/data/tokens
The original product token for Dash is, of course, Dash itself as money. If you wish to use Dash as money, you should buy some.
Data storage, tokens, NFTs, and other similar things are the product tokens for the Evolution chain. You should buy these if you want to use them (data storage is paid in Dash as a gas token).
Dash's investment thesis:
You should buy Dash and run masternodes/EvoNodes if you believe that Dash will see significant traction as a decentralized money and payments system, or as a data storage and decentralized application platform, or both.
The payments and money use case is much more established, and Dash is already usable for instant private payments to pay for all bills and expenses in much of the world (that's been my primary money for years). It's ready for more users today.
However, this won't translate to significant revenue for the network anytime soon. Individuals only make a few payments per day, and Dash fees are a fraction of a cent.
Even when adding in privacy features and storage of transaction metadata, it would only translate to a few cents max per payment. Even millions of daily transactions wouldn't amount to much when spread across all masternodes.
Yes, long-term I believe transactions of truly decentralized money are big business, however this doesn't really start to make a dent until it hits massive scale.
The mid-term bet: DApps and data
Probably the better bet would be data and application use cases taking off, as this could potentially increase on-chain revenue by a decent amount with just a couple of popular apps. These apps are a bit further out than the payments use case (which is available today), but would start generating significant revenue much quicker.
Dash is launching some pretty advanced token functionality, and smart contracts in the not-too-distant future, but the real centerpiece is easy data storage and access.
The bet therefore is that Dash competes to offer the same use cases as modern programmatic chains like Solana offer (but hopefully better), or finds a niche in its data offering.
How can Dash stand out?
In a crowded field of smart contract chains, maybe the way Dash stands out is that you can also use it as money without swapping to something like Litecoin, or using a censorable stablecoin?
In a world where it can be used as money better than just about everything else, but the demand to do so just isn't there yet, maybe the selling point is to be able to directly spend your DApp/DeFi tokens/earnings?
Remains to be seen.